Perhaps Donald Trump’s greatest talent is his ability to feed fake news to his fans without interference from the mainstream press. In his signature move, he piles on a bunch of smaller lies and then follows up with an outrageous statement. The press then covers the controversy while ignoring the other nuggets. Meanwhile, his base reads them, sees that they have not been refuted and accepts them as truth. Perhaps this is one explanation for the fact that while his approval rating sits at a historically low 42%, only 2% of his voters regret their decision.

This weekend’s events marking Trump’s first 100 days in office provides an example of the problem as the press gets lost in their coverage of his “deeply disturbing” speech in Harrisburg while ignoring Trump’s weekly address. Meanwhile, this address contains outright lies that feed Trump’s alternate reality. Since our impotent press has failed to provide any type of fact-checking, I’ll do their job for them:

If Trump is not lying with this opening statement, then he is surely delusional. The hundred-day was initiated during the FDR administration as he responded to the crisis of the Great Depression and acted accordingly. Obama faced a Great Recession that was threatening to deepen and acted quickly by ushering in a stimulus package. Even if Trump had the ability to display this type of leadership, the circumstances of a deep, overwhelming crisis do not exist that would enable him to unite the country around a solution.

This week, Granada Hills Charter High School (GHCHS) will attempt to win its sixth national Academic Decathlon championship in seven years. If this were a high school sports team instead of an academic one, the improbability of this accomplishment would probably be more of a focus but instead, it is blindly celebrated. No one seems to ask how it possible for a school that is supposed to draw from surrounding neighborhoods to consistently dominate a competition in a way that can only be compared to the winning streaks of the Harlem Globetrotters or the USA’s Olympic basketball Dream Teams. There is no doubt that members of Granada’s team work hard to achieve their success, but does the demographic makeup of this school give their team an unfair advantage?

If it is true that Brian Bauer, aka Brian Bayer, was accidentally recorded as the owner of the house on Zelzah, it is unclear why it took three and a half years to correct the mistake. The Governing Board is responsible for the $440,000 spent on the property and should have immediately noticed that the deed to the property had “accidentally” been given to their Executive Director. The charter is subject to a yearly “independent” audit, but these auditors also seemed to miss this major problem. As the authorizer for GHCHS, the LAUSD is responsible for oversight and conducts annual reviews. For three and a half years they also missed the problem.

There is an actual public school named Magnolia and they need your help. They are set to be a victim of one of Monica Garcia's Prop 39 colocations and her fighting back. Please sign their petition at Change.org.

As I walked off stage at the only debate in the race for LAUSD’s District 2’s Board seat, a student walked up to me to express his support and to say that “we need you on the Board.” I thanked him and also assured him that I would continue fighting for the students of the District, win or lose. This pledge immediately came to mind as I found a flyer delivered by the District to the house in East L.A. where I had rented a room in order to run against Monica Garcia and her allegiance to charters. The public school closest to where I had lived for the past six months is scheduled to become the latest host for a charter school parasite and the District had scheduled an informational meeting to discuss the issue. On Tuesday morning I attended this meeting with approximately 60 parents of Marianna Avenue Elementary school. According to the flyer, staff was also invited to this meeting, but how exactly were they supposed to participate while school was in session? So much for the LAUSD’s goal of “parent and community engagement”.